Like, would a skyscraper-style datacenter be practical? Or is just a matter of big, flat buildings being cheaper?

  • Pistcow@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    Electricity has a hard time flowing up and requires a special pumping system.

        • actionjbone@sh.itjust.works
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          19 hours ago

          Solution: instruct the buildings upside down, so the foundations are up in the air and the roofs are underground. That way, the electricity will flow down instead of up.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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            18 hours ago

            But then the roof has to support the entire weight of planet Earth on top of it, which is a much harder engineering challenge than pumping the electricity in the first place.

      • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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        17 hours ago

        Because the electricity pulls the magnets down in the same measure, so they meet in the middle. Newton’s 2nd law or something.

    • phx@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      You joke, but heat does rise and a tall building would need to make extra concessions for cooling concerns, while also dealing with the issues if weight. Large racks of servers are actually quite heavy, which is why many datacenters in i.e Toronto were built in an ex parking garage

      • Prime@lemmy.sdf.org
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        12 hours ago

        Heat is no issue of relevance for the question. The rising effect it negligible compared to what has to be transported anyway. I also can’t imagine racks being heavier than eg books in s library.

        • phx@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          How many high-rise libraries do you see? Weight is absolutely a factor in data center design, as is airflow/heat

    • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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      18 hours ago

      Unironically, I’ve had people telling me they save electric energy by inserting the angled Schuko plugs of their electric devices ‘upwards’.